Sooner or later the floppies on these old macs are going to need a refurb, a cleaning or have the eject gear replaced. There are two really good videos about teardown, clean, fix and re-lube avaiable they are listed below. If you are going to do this have some proper lube ready to ensure the…
Category Archives: Apple
MacTCP System 6 Error Codes
With my new project (running a BBS on my Macintosh SE in System 6) using SubText an amazing modern BBS software server from JCS (Joshua Stein) I’ve encountered some System Errors- and like most things on the Internet today they are hard to google for (it seems like the world just searches for OSX info)…
OBS and App Audio Recording
Capturing this here because it’s so bizarre to do this in 2022. OSX Monterey, OBS running to record a running Altirra session (run via Crossover) and audio sounds like mud. It sounds that way because it’s the mic on the display that is picking up the audio from the speakers… How can OBS pick up…
SE/30 and HD20
Dammit The (non-SCSI) Hard Disk 20 does not work with the Macintosh SE/30. The Macintosh SE/30 has the same logic board and ROM as the Macintosh IIx, which does not support the Hard Disk 20. Therefore, the code to support the drive is not included in the ROM of the Macintosh SE/30. So much for…
The Best Windows or Linux Laptop
For a few years I’ve been looking for the best small light laptop for Windows or Linux. I love the mac trackpad and keyboard. I finally realized that I loved the Mac Hardware…
Apple IIGS and OBS
I’ve been using a IIGS lately for FujiNet testing. I wanted to connect the video to OBS. This scart converter was recommended and was a very nice solution to go from the RBG of the IIGS to HDMI…
Disk Jockey – manage disk images
An amazing utility for the Mac just popped up on my twitter feed and its looks like exactly what I need. Disk Jockey will Disk Jockey is a macOS application that lets you create disk images and analyze existing ones. It can create images that work in devices like BlueSCSI, FloppyEmu and RaSCSI, as well…
Display Port on TB3 MacBookPro
I have a MBP 14,3 and wanted to connect it to some external displays via DP. I have the apple TB2 to TB3 adapter (the one that goes to USBC connector) and I noticed that while it will work with the Apple Thunderbolt Display, connecting a LCD panel to this using a DP to mini-DP…
Photos and BigSur
Update: This issue has been solved. I had to completely repartition and format the external disks and ensure they contained at least one APFS Container. I’m guessing there is permission metadata contained in this that isn’t available with the partitions created in Catalina. Once they were partitioned and formatted in BigSur, and contained a container…
MacPro NVMe Update
So a few things have been learned regarding the MacPro and NVMe. Booting is fine. Multiple drives on a carrier is not. My MacPro refused to recognize the 4x Hyper 2x carrier with more than one NVMe drive in it. Even in the x16 PCI slot- and I tried both Slot 1 and 2 (there…
MacPro 5,1 – NVME Turbo Charging the Disks
Putting SSD drives into the MacPro was a total change in experiencing OSX. The increases in speed and responsiveness gave new life to this aging platform (mine is a Mid 2010). Â The next step in performance is using NVMe drives on the PCI buss. And this is surprisingly easy to do. Asus has an…
USB 3 for your MacPro 5,1
Now that my Mac is back I wanted to address another issue- lack of USB 3.1 and also general lack of USB. I’ve found that i’m using most of the available USB ports (many for multiple serial interfaces I use to connect to my SGI consoles). I also have a external drive that is USB…
MacPro 5,1 Firmware Problems
Recently my MacPro 5,1 (still running High Sierra) starting crashing on an OSX Update of some kind. It started mid-April and I’m not sure which one it was, but the Mac wouldn’t boot as it ended up in the crash screen for the installer with some sort of error on finding a file that wasn’t…
GamePad fail on MacOS
Update: May 2nd – I’m happy to say that a super cheap pair (you get two) of USB gamepads from Amazon did the trick. $ ./start-old.sh DonkeyKong.v2.atr Using Atari800 config file: atari800-80.cfg Created by Atari 800 Emulator, Version 3.1.0 joystick 0 found! joystick 1 not found Now I can enjoy games with sound and joystick…
Wireless Image transfer for iOS and MacOS
Today, while taking some shots of items for a post with my iPhone I needed to transfer them across to my Mac for some sizing, scaling, and prep for loading up to this blog. My goto app is ImageCapture.app on the Mac which lets me quickly see my iOS photos, select what I want to…
Macbook Air 11 – The Last Ones
I’ve had a MBA 11″ since 2011 (MacBookAir4,1) and I’ve never been able to find any other laptop that had such an unbeatable combination of size, speed, flexibility, and utility. My 11 has been amazing and my go-to mac (I also have a 13 and 15 MBPs between work and home) for most things, but…
WOMBAT
I spent some good money and time getting my SE/30 uplifted and retrofitted for modern use. Both the motherboard, analog board and power-supply have been recapped, it has 32M RAM installed and a SCSI to CF adapter to ensure quiet operation and no surprise disk failures. The one failure I encountered was the keyboard and…
Macbook
The MacBook is an incredible piece of engineering technology. This one is sitting on the MacBook Pro it’s replacing- after three years. 13†vs 12†and it’s more powerful and has more storage. The same amount of ram however. The size difference is astonishing…
Stop Safari from showing Annoying Frequently Visited Sites
This is way, super annoying. Every time I want to drag a site down into the bookmarks this gets in the way. http://apple.stackexchange.com…
Mac OSX 10.10 and SCSI
Update 2017: 10.12 – Sierra broke the SCSI drivers and so ends the tales of SCSI and Atto on my Mac. Nothing I could do could get them to load. At some point I’ll revert the Mac back to 10.11 and use the SCSI if I ever need to read any of my tapes. Update:…
Apple Mini Yosemite Super Laggy – Fix
My mini is a 2011 i5 with Radeon graphics. Most of my work is on an external rail via thunderbolt, but the system has always been a little laggy to me. I work on Macbook pros and MacBook Airs (new, with flash drives) at work, and the mini has never been as quick and responsive…
Jeff vs Steve
The ultimate 1987 Face Off  …
Android Still Sucks at 4.3
When Android 4.3 API18 came out I pulled my old Nexus 7 out of the drawer, charged it, let it update to 4.3.18 and tried to use it for the next three days, leaving my iPad mini in the drawer instead. Â What I found out was: Android OS still sucks unbelievably bad. It’s kinda…
Dashboard Open Sourced on Github
 The Author of the seminal Dashboad for NewtOS has released it to the world on GitHub. There is a great read there on Github about the process. There is also a nice review about Dashboard that I came across if you are not familiar with what it did…
iCloud Safari Syncing Sucks Balls
iCloud Safari syncing just stopped worked about 3 weeks ago for one of my computers, and I cannot make it work again, I’ve clear and clear and re-synced each of my computers and iPhone. Finally, I just gave up and use Dropbox now. Â Just move Library/Safari over to Dropbox somewhere, and create a symlink…